[ Type 97 Tank MG ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a very cool machine gun.
This is a Japanese Type 97 tank gun.
Tank is maybe a little bit of a misnomer,
the Japanese would use this from 1937 on
(when it was first adopted, hence Type 97 equates to 1937),
they would use this in basically every armoured vehicle that they had.
Tanks, tankettes, armoured cars, all of them. This was the armoured vehicle machine gun.
Now, it plays a really interesting and pivotal role
in the development of Japanese ammunition.
Specifically the Japanese have the 7.7mm cartridge, that's 7.7x58mm.
And it's a confusing topic,
because there is both a rimless and a semi-rimmed version of the cartridge.
And some of them work in some guns, and some of them don't work in others.
And there's a lot of uncertainty in most of the gun world as to, "Like, what's the deal with all this?"
Well, the deal is the Japanese started with a 6.5mm semi-rimmed cartridge.
And it's a beautiful cartridge for rifles, very soft shooting, wonderful ... cartridge.
But it didn't have the penetration and the lethality that the Japanese were hoping for.
And so, starting in 1929, they began looking at ways to get a more powerful cartridge.
And this wasn't predominantly for rifles, this was predominantly for machine guns,
and in particular vehicle machine guns, like both ground vehicles and aircraft.
You need to be able to punch through light armour.
In an aerial role the Japanese had never used the 6.5. They went straight to Vickers guns,
... Lewis and Vickers guns both, purchased from the British, chambered for .303 British.
And so they had this 7.7mm bullet at rifle velocities for their aircraft, and it worked fairly well.
But they had a 6.5mm cartridge for ground vehicles and it was sub-par, unsatisfactory.
So, interestingly, the first tank gun they actually tried out was the Type 91.
Which was basically a Type 11, which is the Hotchkiss gun with
this hopper feed that you fill up with stripper clips.
And they gave it a larger hopper to hold more stripper clips.
And that was the first iteration of a tank gun, and it was not really suitable.
So they started looking for something new.
Well, at the same time that they're looking for a new vehicle gun,
they want the larger calibre for the vehicle gun.
And so what they do is pretty much combine the projectile that they already have,
(they're already using the Lewis guns, so they have this
.3105 diameter projectile and barrels),
and combined that with a larger cartridge case.
They liked the performance of the German 8mm, and they basically take that cartridge case.
... That's why it's 58mm in Japanese service, it's an adapted Mauser case.
And they combine these two to get 7.7x58, and they make it a semi-rimmed cartridge
to use in their heavy machine guns, just like they had with the 6.5.
At this point we ... can like ... transition now to the other factory
where Kijiro Nambu is tinkering around with ideas for a tank machine gun.
You need something that can be compact.
You don't want to be messing around with hoppers full of stripper clips,
and the 7.7 cartridge would have required an even bigger hopper.
And he gets to looking at the ZB series of Czech machine guns,
the ZB 26, the ZB 30, at this point the ZB 30J.
And looks at it, and goes basically,
"Well, that's a heck of a good machine gun, maybe we can just use that."
But that semi-rimmed 7.7 cartridge didn't really work well in ZB 26 magazines.
And so the short-term solution is, "Well, let's just turn the rim off, make it rimless, and try it."
And it worked great. And they took this rimless ammo and stuck it in the heavy machine guns
and, "Huh, it just worked fine in those too, so maybe that."
And that, by the way, is what they would end up using for the Arisaka rifles.
The Type 99 in 7.7 has rimless ammunition.
But the whole point, the whole reason it was rimless, is because of development of this gun.
So that's been a rather roundabout story to get to where we are here,
which is Kijiro Nambu sitting there with a ZB.
Not really a ZB 26. The ZB 26 has a gas port ... a little farther out, it's not adjustable.
The ZB 30 and 30J make some improvements to the general system,
with, in particular, an adjustable gas regulator.
And that's what Nambu copies.
And he copies it so closely that the magazines interchange,
you can use ZB 26 magazines in a Type 97.
Which is really good, because Type 97 magazines are extremely rare and hard to find.
So, what do we need to do to make the ZB effectively into a good Japanese tank gun?
Well, we're going to chamber it for the ... new 7.7 rimless cartridge.
And then we ... want to be able to cool the barrel
because you potentially are going to be firing for extended periods.
Or you're going to be potentially dumping a lot of ammo at once, so we'll give it a finned barrel.
We need to change up all the sighting systems because this is meant to be mounted in a vehicle.
So you can see the front sight is back here,
and that's so that it is inside the armour of the vehicle.
The gun gets mounted somewhere in here in a ball turret [mount].
We will also outfit them with optical sights.
All of a 1.5x power optic, we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
And then you need some space. Like, the vehicles are tight inside,
and you don't want a buttstock sticking out of the back of the gun which you don't really need.
Like you don't need to support the gun on your shoulder for
shooting, because it's fixed in the vehicle.
So, let's give it a folding stock.
Well, if we need a folding stock, the problem with the ZB series then is the
... recoil spring goes into the buttstock, so we have to relocate it.
And we'll relocate the spring to the tube under the barrel,
like one of the early Degtyaryev machine guns.
Starting with some markings here. On the right side we have the serial number.
... And by the way, this does not necessarily reflect total production,
this is actually mid-range production.
We have the date of production, 17.5 translates to August of 1942.
Which would be early in the war by US standards,
mid or later in the war by Japanese and Sino-Japanese War standards.
This was produced at the Nagoya Arsenal.
There would be Type 97 tank guns made by Nagoya, Toyo Kogyo, and also the Kokura Arsenal,
so all three arsenals built them at various points during the war.
We have the model designation on the top which is "9 7 Shiki", or Type 97.
The pistol grip here is quite distinctive.
To me it's actually very reminiscent of the Type 14 Nambu pistol.
And you know what, there were some countries that didn't like
pistol grips on their machine guns, or put small ones on.
I like this, the Japanese went for a big, square, easy to use pistol grip.
Remember that this is to be primarily used inside a vehicle,
so ... this is going to be your primary control of the gun.
The buttstock is telescoping and folding.
So we have a pin here, and this is spring loaded.
And if I pull that out, I can then rotate the stock into this position.
It'll lock in the downward position, not really sure yet why you would want that.
It will also lock in ... the forward position.
This is where it would be most of the time if it were in a vehicle,
folded forward and thoroughly out of the way.
However, if you have to evacuate the vehicle and take the gun with you,
then you can unfold it and have use of the gun ... like an infantry-pattern light machine gun.
The length of pull here is also adjustable, so there's a spring latch.
You just depress that once to unlock it, and then the stock is actually threaded.
So you can screw it in until you hit the next stop, which would be right there.
And there are four stops on this, so you have four options
that are about a centimetre apart for different lengths.
And a little bit of a rubber butt pad on the stock itself.
The magazine is 20 rounds, and it is actually so similar
to the ZB 26 or ZB 30 magazine as to be interchangeable.
This is actually a Czech-made ZB magazine.
They made the magazine release a bit larger than the standard ZB.
On an infantry gun that would get in the way,
on a tank gun it's convenient to have the larger control.
And then there is a spring-loaded magazine well cover that we can snap into place.
And when you open it like that to insert a magazine,
that spring tosses it nicely open.
Over on this side we have a nice, big, chunky charging handle.
Once again this would be kind of in the way in the field,
but in a tank, good to have a nice, big control there to work with.
This does fire from an open bolt.
It is full-auto only. This is the safety, ... fire is up here.
Pull the pin out, you can rotate it down into the safe position, which locks the trigger.
This bracket, right here, is the rear mounting point and elevation adjustment for the scope.
And this is a big ol' heavy scope, there's a ton of steel that went into this thing,
despite the fact that it is only a 1.5x power magnification optic.
And it's got a really big padded eye cup, that's of course for using in the vehicle.
You can just stuff your face right up against that.
So if the tank or the armoured car is bouncing around,
you're not going to bruise your face up on the back of a metal scope.
Your windage and elevation adjustments for the scope are built into the mount right here.
So this is windage,
and then your elevation is this dial, which connects of course to
that socket in the gun.
We have a mounting bracket here for actually fixing the gun in the tank.
We have a rear aperture sight. Note that in this case
the sights are offset to the right of the gun, on a ZB they're offset to the left.
And I think that's just to put them on the same side as the stock,
and have them opposite of the scope.
The scope is what you would primarily be using, the iron sights are a backup.
This is your elevation dial, you can actually see your elevation number.
So that's 600, 800, 1,000 metres,
and it goes all the way down to I think 200 is the minimum.
And that is paired with an offset front sight about halfway down the barrel.
... Actually it looks very much like an Arisaka front sight.
We have an adjustable gas block, there are five settings in the gas block,
and they are numbered.
So there's position number 2.
Somewhat inconveniently, the number that you are using
is the one directly under the barrel, which is the hardest to read.
To change it you pull this spring-loaded collar back and just rotate it,
so it's now in gas position number 2.
Now in order to facilitate the use of a folding stock,
they had to relocate the recoil spring to be under the barrel.
You can in fact see it, right there.
That involves the use of this part, which is very important,
sometimes missing, and often not recognised.
So this is a little ... pin that holds the recoil spring in place here,
so that when the ... operating rod goes backwards
the spring compresses in this tube against this pin.
So in order to take the assembly out of the gun, we have to remove this.
Just push in the button on the end, and this pops right out.
Now one last element to show you here is the emergency bipod.
This would be stored in the vehicle,
not typically used, obviously, when the gun is mounted in the vehicle.
But if you have to bail out, you take this with you.
And to use it you actually unfold it,
like this, and it loops around any one of the cooling fins in the gun.
You can see the groove here, that locks around a cooling fin.
And you can put this anywhere you want on the gun,
all the way at the back, all the way at the front, whatever you prefer.
So I put that down there, hook that in like so, pull the bipod around.
And then to lock it in place, we have this screw catch that's going to loop through there.
And just tighten it down enough to hold the bipod in place.
And there you have it on the front of the gun.
Now we can take the thing apart, we're going to start by popping this pin out.
Give that a little tap with a punch to get it started.
That is a captive pin, so it's going to stay there.
Normally on a ZB at this point you have spring tension from the main spring pushing this off,
but remember our main spring has moved. So we can pull this end plate off.
We have a spring-loaded recoil buffer
(that's a really stiff spring) right there at the back.
Now we can pull the charging handle back,
and pull the bolt and op rod out of the gun.
And there we have that.
Notice, like I said, the spring is up here on the op rod.
And this pin locks basically like this.
So when the op rod goes backward, it compresses the recoil spring like so.
Without this, gun don't work.
The bolt and bolt carrier here are virtually identical to the ZB 26, ZB 30, ZB 30J family.
I won't go into exactly how this functions, I have a video on the ZB 26 if you're interested.
We can go ahead and remove the barrel.
This has the same sort of locking ring style of barrel attachment as the ZB.
The difference is where the ZB has a little spring button here, this has a lever.
We push that down, this lever that way,
and then we can lift ...
(there we go), we can lift that up at like 45 degrees or so.
That is now unlocked.
And presto, we can pull out the barrel, which has interrupted thread locking just like a ZB.
This is a pretty heavy barrel, large diameter plus those cooling fins.
We've got our gas plug on the front here.
And I can actually just unscrew the gas plug all the way.
So you can see there are your five holes, from smallest up to largest,
and marked right there.
If I had the official wrench I could also take off the gas tube.
There's a little spring plunger right there,
you push that in, and then this just un-threads.
But it hasn't been un-threaded in a long time and it's stuck in there,
and I don't have a wrench at hand to do it. So we'll leave that alone.
And then we could also take the grip assembly and fire control mechanism off
by punching out this cross pin, but that's also really tight in there.
And I don't want to mess with that, there's nothing particularly interesting in there.
Again, this is mechanically a ZB.
And there you have all of the component parts
of a field-stripped Japanese Type 97 tank machine gun.
The Type 97 would prove to be a very effective machine gun.
It was produced starting in 1937, all the way through the end of the war.
Total production is somewhere around 15,000 to 17,000.
The Japanese aren't known for having had a lot of armoured vehicles,
and they were able to very thoroughly equip them with these guns.
They're reliable, they're durable, and they ... gave really good service.
There is an interesting question as to ... when they wanted a 7.7mm infantry gun:
why did they not adapt this to a dedicated ground gun,
and basically kind of revert it back to more of a standard ZB 30,
instead of converting the Type 96 Nambus to 7.7 as the Type 99s?
There are certainly arguments to be made both ways.
One of the more convincing arguments probably
for the Japanese at the time was that of licensing rights.
They were generally pretty good about paying licence and patent royalties where necessary.
They paid for royalties on the Hotchkiss designs that they used.
They paid Germany royalties on the MG 15 that they copied.
They did not pay the Czechs for using elements of the ZB.
And to be honest, I haven't gone back and tried to figure out exactly what patents
on the ZB system would have still been in force in 1937.
... Maybe there wasn't a patent that the Japanese had to pay for,
maybe because they relocated the recoil spring.
But the idea of turning it back into more of an infantry gun,
and producing them in greater quantity,
they may have been concerned about not wanting to pay royalties to Brno.
Or they may just have liked the idea of continuing production of a domestic Japanese design.
The Type 96 is a fantastic gun,
and they may have seen elements of that that they preferred over the ZB pattern.
At any rate, I'm going kind of astray now.
These are pretty darn scarce in the US, of course, tank guns are always scarce.
They don't tend to get brought home by veterans nearly as much
because they're kind of inconvenient.
There are some parts on this gun that can be extremely difficult to find
and extremely important, like the little recoil spring clothes pin.
The bipods are quite scarce, the scopes are very scarce,
the scope mounting brackets are even scarcer.
So it's pretty cool to have one that's almost 100% here,
like the only thing missing from this package is the front scope mount bracket.
And there are reproductions of those made, should you want that to fit on here.
At any rate, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video,
it's not often that we get a chance to take a look at one of these.
Thanks for watching.